A Sick Pace

Last October, Brent Hatch lay in a painkiller-induced haze, a catheter in his leg, tubes down his nose, and the Twin Cities Marathon on the television in his hospital room. Just three weeks before he was supposed to run the LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon, Hatch was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia, a slow-growing bone-marrow cancer. Hatch watched the waves of runners on TV and thought, I'll never do that again.

Hatch was wrong--happily so. Six months later he not only ran the 2006 Boston Marathon but set a personal record of 2:54. This October he plans to make his comeback complete by running the marathon his cancer thwarted last year. And the 40-year-old fifth-grade teacher from St. Francis, Minnesota, is going to Chicago with bold ambitions: he's hoping to run 2:40.

"I was ready to give up in that hospital room," says Hatch, who is in partial remission, meaning the cancer has been reduced but not eliminated. "But I thought, you know, this would be a good lesson for my students--that you don't quit when you run into adversity."

Setbacks

In 1998, Hatch was diagnosed with an aggressive testicular cancer composed of several strains--similar, he says, to what Lance Armstrong had. Doctors removed the lymph nodes around Hatch's abdomen and spine and tested them to see if the cancer had spread to the rest of his body. It hadn't. "It was pretty miraculous," Hatch says. "I dodged a bullet."

During the next five years, he took up running, lost 42 pounds, and appeared to be in the best shape of his life. But then in September 2003, while teaching, Hatch suffered a stroke (due to an irregular heartbeat, blood pooled in his heart and formed a clot). Fortunately, the stroke was mild. Hatch hopped back on his treadmill within two weeks, and the following June he surprised himself--and those who scoffed at his prerace dinner of beer and chicken wings (now a ritual)--by qualifying for Boston with a 3:13 marathon debut at Grandma's in Duluth, Minnesota.

As he prepared for the 2005 Boston Marathon, Hatch began to experience abdominal pain that struck about every six weeks and lingered for a few days. It would be eight months--and two marathons--before doctors would discover the cause: leukemia. In the meantime, Hatch ran 3:01 at Boston, and persevered through intense stomach cramps at Grandma's two months later. "I ran doubled-over and leaning to the left side most of the race," says Hatch, who still managed to finish in 3:07. "The last 12 or 13 miles, I felt like I was going to throw up. But I just kept pushing."

The exploratory surgery that led to Hatch's latest diagnosis caused severe internal bleeding, and he spent 12 touch-and-go days in intensive care. He left the hospital barely able to walk. A week later, he was back in the classroom. Five weeks later, even though his doctors had forbidden it, he started running. A month later, he was up to 70 miles a week.

"Everyone who knew him was concerned last fall when he started to run again, but we saw how happy it made him," says Carl Byron, a childhood friend. "It's what he has to do."
Training for His Life

Before leukemia, Hatch logged 110 miles a week, all solo, refusing to slow down even to drink water. He still prefers training on the treadmill in his basement. "There's no cheating," he says. "Running on the roads, you slow down at red lights."

Hatch now takes Gleevec, a medication that attacks the enzyme that allows leukemia cells to grow. He sometimes feels like he can't catch his breath, which could be due to low levels of red blood cells, which carry oxygen. So he's scaled back his training--to 90 miles a week. To prepare him for the 6:09-minute pace he plans to run in Chicago, his weekly schedule includes a 20-miler (between 6:55- and 7:20-minute pace), a midweek 15-miler, plus speedwork.

During some of Hatch's more intense workouts, his wife, Tammi, can hear him gasping for air through the floorboards of their house. But she supports his training: "It's keeping him alive," she says.

Hatch has bone-marrow biopsies every six months. Eventually, he may need to have a bone-marrow or stem-cell transplant, but these procedures can have fatal complications. Until then, he'll run.

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